Isabel Kelly

Isabel Truesdell Kelly (1906–1983) was an American anthropologist known for her work with the members of the Coast Miwok tribe, members of the Chemehuevi people in the 1920s and 1930s, and her work later in life as an archaeologist working in Sinaloa, Mexico. She was trained by anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber at the University of California, Berkeley.

Education and career Kelly attended the University of California, Berkeley and earned her BA in 1926, her MA in 1927, and her PhD in 1932, all in anthropology. In 1946 she was appointed Ethnologist-in-Charge of the Mexico city office of the Smithsonian Institution's Institute of Social Anthropology (ISA). She taught at the ISA and, with the assistance of students, did research among the Totonac in the Mexico state of Veracruz. The ISA was started in 1943 and disbanded at the end of 1952 — at that time Kelly and the ISA's other remaining anthropologists were transferred to the Institute of Inter-American affairs.

Publications Most widely held works by Kelly: The carver's art of the Indians of northwestern California, 1930 Ethnography of the Surprise Valley Paiute, 1932 Excavations at Culiacán, Sinaloa , 1945 The archaeology of the Autlán-Tuxcacuesco area of Jalisco, 1945 Excavations at Apatzingan, Michoacan, 1947 The Tajin Totonac, 1952 Folk practices in north Mexico; birth customs, folk medicine, and spiritualism in the Laguna Zone, 1965 The Hodges Ruin : a Hohokam community in the Tucson Basin, 1978 Ceramic sequence in Colima : Capacha, an early phase, 1980 Isabel T. Kelly's Southern Paiute Ethnographic Field Notes, 1932-1934, Las Vegas, 2016